The Pacific's Hour

If there was any doubt that the United States will look more and more toward the East rather than Europe or Latin America as its first priority in commercial matters, several stories that went practically unnoticed in the last few days would have cleared any question on the matter.

First, President Obama said on Nov. 13, during the summit of the Asia-Pacific region’s 21 countries held in Hawaii, that the United States is a country of the Pacific. He added that no region will be more important to the U.S.’s long-term economic future than the Asia-Pacific region.

In the summit, and in a subsequent trip to Asia, Obama initiated formal conversations with Japan and several other countries — Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Chile and Peru — to widen the Association of Countries of the Transpacific, which could become the greatest commercial bloc of the world. South Korea, Canada and Mexico have already shown their interest in joining the association.

Secondly, shortly before Obama’s trip, the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, published an article in the magazine Foreign Policy titled “America’s Pacific Century.” There, she affirms that the economic future of the United States will depend on its capacity to conquer the Asian markets.

Thirdly, a new study on the student exchanges of several countries together with the United States — which can be a good indication of the future bonds between the entrepreneurial and academic elites of the countries in question — revealed that there is an enormous growth in the number of Asian students in American universities and a fall in the number of Latin American students.

According to the Opened Doors study by the International Institute of Education, headquartered in New York, the number of Asian students in the universities of the United States increased 6 percent last year, reaching 462,000 students, while the number of Latin American students fell by 2 percent to a total of 64,000 students.

It is not a statistical accident: the increase in Asian students has been occurring for more than a decade.

Last year, the countries with the highest number of university students in the U.S. were China (158,000), India (104,000), South Korea (73,000), Canada (28,000), Taiwan (25,000), Saudi Arabia (23,000) and Japan (21,000).

Asian students, attracted by the fact that American universities occupy the first positions in all worldwide rankings of universities, consider a degree from an American university the best passport to obtaining a good job in their countries. Even Vietnam has 15,000 students in American universities — more than Mexico, which does not have 14,000. Among the countries of Latin America, Mexico appears takes first place, followed by Brazil with 9,000 students; Colombia, 6,000; Venezuela, 5,000; and Jamaica, 3,000.

I asked several government employees of the United States, “Don’t these numbers represent a setback for Obama’s plan to increase to 100,000 the number of Latin American students who study in the United States, and vice versa, by the end of this decade?”

Fabiola Rodriguez-Ciampoli, a high-ranking employee of the State Department, told me that since Obama’s plan was announced toward the end of the 2010 academic year, the first signs of their impact will be seen in the numbers of the next year. Obama is planing to make specific announcements in the Summit of the Americas, which will be held in April 2012 in Cartagena, Colombia.

A substantial increase in Brazilian students is expected after the recent announcement of Brazil granting a scholarship to 75,000 college students so that they could continue their studies abroad, especially in the areas of engineering, science and technology. American civil employees trust that over 45,000 of the Brazilian scholars will go to American colleges in the next few ears, and that other countries of the region will follow Brazil’s steps so as not to be left behind.

My opinion: Obama is trying to increase the American presence in Asia because of the fast economic growth of the region and also because Washington wants to offset China’s growth. That is understandable; however, the United States should look to the South at least as much as to the East.

The United States exports three times more to Latin America than to China, and taking into account that the Latin American economies are growing, perhaps it has not been very reasonable to self-define the United States as a country of the Pacific, tacitly excluding the Latin American countries of the Atlantic — among them Brazil — and Europe from the equation.

When Obama goes to the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena next year, as well as the next time he’ll meet with European leaders, he is going to have to do some rhetorical balancing to mitigate the damage caused by the proclamation of absolute love to the countries of the Pacific.